I’m done with the Democrats.
I voted for Kamala Harris — but left the party I’d belonged to for decades after witnessing its unhinged reaction to the Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act, as I explained in these pages last month.
The Democratic position on transgender rights is part of a larger problem: the Democratic embrace of being “woke.”
To be woke means to accept without question the claims of the myriad identity groups that demand special treatment.
The Democrats were once the party of working people and unions. They were committed to bridging the gap between rich and poor. The Dems sought practical solutions. They focused on class. Now they seem to focus on every characteristic except class.
Democrats correctly identified a serious problem in the 1960s that was holding us back from making progress: discrimination.
The Democratic solution was affirmative action, which specified the determination of who was qualified for a position should be made without regard to race, color, religion or national origin. The idea was these characteristics could then be used to distinguish among qualified candidates.
The problem is affirmative action became a clumsy marker for who should be hired rather than a more nuanced examination of applicants’ skills, which can be found in abundance in communities that suffered discrimination.
“We should hire X because X and Y are both well qualified and hiring X, a minority candidate, would increase diversity” became “We should hire X because of her or his race or sex even if Y is better qualified.” Critics of affirmative action said what was really going on was reverse discrimination.
Affirmative action became about group membership; membership in that group, without more, was itself considered a qualification.
Discussions of merit became irrelevant — indeed offensive — because any interpretation of merit that did not favor the member of the identity group could be explained away as itself a manifestation of discrimination. Each group had its own standards that were met largely by group membership and intra-group assessment.
Democrats insisted any further discussion of merit was an attempt by “elites” or “racists” or “sexists” or “colonialists” to reestablish the old order.
And “identity politics” was born.
“Woke” went from being a term people of color used as synonymous with “awake” that advised vigilance about subtle racism to a largely pejorative term used to describe the position of not criticizing, questioning or discussing the claims of any of the many groups that sought top billing in the discrimination pecking order. Those claims had to be accepted by anyone who considered themselves “progressive.”
The Democrats established, in essence, a “Grievance Olympics” where various groups compete to be considered the most victimized.
So when I argue trans ideology is misogynistic because it involves a claim by men to the right to define who is a “woman,” and allowing males into private/intimate spaces increases safety risks for women, I am met with a wall of complaints (and accusations of being “transphobic”) that trans people are subjected to more discrimination and so should be accommodated because women are lesser victims than are trans people.
And any academic who says he or she was never in an appointments meeting when there was a discussion where the primary focus was on diversity alone with no meaningful consideration of merit is not telling the truth.
After 40 years teaching in universities, I can attest to the damage of this.
I believe in affirmative action. I believe using race or sex to deny a qualified candidate of color or woman some benefit is wrong and there’s a role for distinguishing among qualified candidates in light of race or sex, a position the Supreme Court has now rejected at least in the context of using race in college admissions. But I do not think group membership is itself a sufficient qualification in any context.
I think the identity politics the Democrats have promoted is corrosive. So did many people who voted in November.
And the Democrats seem to have forgotten that in a liberal pluralistic society, people are going to say things with which others disagree and, indeed, that offend other people. The “progressive” position often supports restrictions on speech.
Consider the controversy over the required use of “preferred pronouns” in the transgender context. That, in effect, requires that people be compelled to talk about others in ways that reflect beliefs the speaker may not have.
If you express concerns about immigration, about which there are certainly legitimate concerns, it does not matter how thoughtful your position may be. You are dismissed as a “bigot” or “xenophobe.” There can be no questioning of the woke canon.
If you express a concern about how the general obesity of the population is threatening national health and driving up the costs of medical treatment for everyone, we don’t discuss your position. We dismiss you as “fat shaming.”
And our colleges and universities are being ruined by this thinking. They are becoming “safe spaces” that seek to limit student contact with any ideas with which the students may disagree. Faculty are often advised to issue “trigger warnings” for anything remotely controversial.
Universities and colleges should be places of physical safety for students, but they should also be places where all thoughts are on the table.
It was once a tenet of progressive thinking that the cure for speech you don’t like is more speech. No more.
It would be sheer folly to not acknowledge that the woke paradigm has silenced many in our universities.
The bottom line is that social justice for Democrats has become little more than virtue signaling.
Rather than trying to bridge the gulf between rich and poor, the Democrats have become the party of petitioning the local Starbucks to have gender-neutral toilets.
Indeed, working people are abandoning the Democratic Party in droves because the party has abandoned them in favor of those who drive Priuses covered in bumper stickers urging coexistence or support for recycling.
Coexistence and global warming are important issues, but neither is advanced much by bumper stickers. And there are other concerns that affect people’s daily lives — issues of wealth disparity and class — that were once a primary concern of the Democratic Party and are now being largely ignored.
Think about this: West Virginia was one of six states that voted for Jimmy Carter in 1980. Donald Trump got 70% of the Mountain State’s vote in November.
The Democratic Party has abandoned working people, and working people have abandoned it.
If the Democratic Party is going to come back, it needs to be a bit woke itself (in the way that term was originally understood) — awake to the needs of everyone, not just those who are the loudest participants in the Grievance Olympics.
Gary L. Francione is Board of Governors professor emeritus at Rutgers University Law School. His latest book is “Why Veganism Matters: The Moral Value of Animals.”
This story originally appeared on NYPost
